Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Hey, remember that time a company wanted to put up a tree carefully disguised as a cellphone tower at the Lake Newport pool complex? Yeah, that was awesome.

Anyhoo, we've heard that the proposal was dropped after the DRB essentially said it would not approve a tower at that location. What, were the fake leaves on the fake tree Hunter Green instead of Emerald Green? We may never know, but we're pretty sure this won't be the last time a company tries to plant (get it?) a fake tree/tower in Reston, as all the kool kidz want better reception for their mad tweets and whatnot on their fancy 4G phones, so the immortal words "zomg Jacksonz is teh lamerz tonite" can travel from Reston Town Center to Hunters Woods at the speed of light. Rad!

In fact, there's a Reston company that specializes in just this kind of fun -- Milestone Communications, which focuses on erecting towers at schools and in parks. They currently have what they call "stealth towers," which must be used to transmit signals to shoe phones, at a number of Fairfax County schools, including several at South Lakes. The company's president, Len Forkas, made a presentation to the Reston Association Board in December, identifying more than 30 possible sites in Reston for towers, which could earn the RA as much as $500,000 a year in revenue-sharing deals. The board suggested he make a similar presentation to the aforementioned DRB, which will likely pore over color swatches to see if the fake trunks are sufficiently "teal" or "russet-y," the end.

Don't think it's $15 million a year, but $500,000 if companies were allowed to build all 30 sites on RA property. Which it's unlikely the DRB would approve, unless they start sticking towers on top of other towers and maybe even the statue of Bob Simon.

I wouldn't mind if they planted all 30 right in the middle of Winterthur. If we can't get rid of the cockroach gangbangers by destroying their gangs, maybe we can drive them out with electromagnetic radiation or, at least, render them impotent.

I can't believe I'm going to say this, but thank God for the DRB. If they have any common sense, they'll make sure these get put in sensible places. Not to be totally NIMBYish -- I know we need more of these towers if I want to get my Angry Birds on -- but I really don't want one of these in a "common area" 15 feet from my house, no matter how awesomely tree-like it might appear to be.

On a serious note...were the RA to receive that $500,000, what would they do with it? My own thinking is that they should refund 1/3 of it to residents in the way of one year's annual assessment that is actually slightly lower than the one before it, and put another 1/3 aside for a capital improvement/replacement fund to finance the refurbishing all RA common facilities are eventually going to need. I don't know what to do with the remaining 1/3. Ideas, anyone?